Schools: Back to the books - for parents' sake

As any parent knows, textbooks are out of fashion. When a 10-year- old arrives home announcing that she has to produce a project on Ancient Egypt by the day after tomorrow, parents are on their own. There is no point in asking to see the textbook with the relevant chapter: it doesn't exist. Nor is there any point in asking for books from the school library: they were both grabbed long ago by the two well-organised 10-year-olds in the class. The only option is to head for a public library or a bookshop. Primary school children are expected to embark on projects in much the same way as graduates are expected to embark on PhDs - from scratch. And parents who make schoolwork a priority give their children a head start.

To many parents, a proposal mooted by Professor Jim Campbell of Warwick University, that we should do as the Italians do and have national textbooks - or the 21st-century high-tech equivalent - will be of more than passing interest. For a country that has never had a Mussolini or a Napoleon, this may sound like an alarmingly centrist notion, but Professor Campbell's argument is compelling. He says that national textbooks are the key to raising primary school standards.

They can be pitched at a level that ensures that teachers have high expectations of their pupils, and they can provide basic information and activities which enable teachers to concentrate on how they teach rather than what they are teaching.

In Tuscany, different aspects of the curriculum are included in an "integrated" textbook - maths, Italian, history, geography and a bit of science. The textbooks are not imposed: schools choose from a range of options.

Children, according to Professor Campbell, feel a real pride in owning their own book.

All this is in sharp contrast with an English primary classroom where children plough their way through piles of scrappy and sometimes inaccurate worksheets devised, often, by their own harassed teachers. Why?

English teachers' resistance to textbooks is mainly ideological. It was the Fifties which gave textbooks a bad name. There were too many dreary lessons in which children snoozed while teachers droned from the front of the class, reading verbatim from the appropriate primer.

The reaction, when it came, was dramatic. In their determination to be creative, teachers threw out the dilapidated histories of England and English grammars and decided to invent their own materials. Some did it brilliantly. Most did no more than reinvent the wheel.

A choice of national textbooks (or software) would surely be a boon to hard-pressed teachers and to their pupils. Far from stifling their imagination, it would free them to devise new ways of teaching and to make the content of lessons more interesting. No one would be compelled to use the books. There would be, say, half-a-dozen in each subject, so that there would be no danger of a government imposing a Thatcherite or a Blairite view of history.

Of course, it would not be cheap. (Schools would say that one reason for the prevalence of worksheets is that they simply cannot afford books.) But there would be savings on other standard-raising initiatives: fewer special grants, less in-service training.

For a government committed to equality of opportunity, it all makes sense. Each child would be guaranteed a similar starting-point both for classwork and for homework. David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education, wants primary school children to do more homework. Yet middle-class children have always had the edge when it comes to homework: more space; more resources; parents who can answer more questions. A selection of national textbooks - kite-marked, Professor Campbell suggests, by a quango such as the new Qualifications and Curriculum Authority - could ensure that all children were equipped with the basic building-blocks for their nightly tasks. And a generation of parents would thank him, not only for improving their children's educational chances, but also for a quieter life.